Police are investigating after racist pamphlets allegedly sent by the Ku Klux Klan directing immigrants to “leave now” and “avoid deportation” were discovered in numerous Kentucky cities on Inauguration Day, officials said.
According to photographs given by police agencies in Ludlow and Bellevue, the leaflets depict Uncle Sam kicking a family of four while carrying a proclamation declaring a “Mass Deportation” on Jan. 20 and stating, “Monitor & Track all Immigrants REPORT THEM ALL,”
The pamphlets claim to be from a Ku Klux Klan organization based in Maysville, Kentucky, and provide phone numbers for regional Klan “realms” in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bellevue Police Chief Jon McClain told The Washington Post Tuesday. “It was kind of alarming for our community.”
The fliers were discovered Monday in Bellevue, Ludlow, and Fort Wright, small northern Kentucky cities near Cincinnati, as the country commemorated Martin Luther King Jr. Day and President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Trump has railed against immigrants and promised to launch a big deportation campaign once in power.
Authorities criticized the fliers and announced that they will file criminal charges against those who disseminated them.
“This type of hateful garbage is loathsome and deplorable, does not represent the Fort Wright Community or the values of our businesses and residents, will not be tolerated in the City of Fort Wright and should not be tolerated by our society as a whole,” Dave Hatter, Fort Wright Mayor, said in a statement.
The Klan has previously sought to distribute hate propaganda in Kentucky. According to local officials in Covington, the Trinity White Knights, a Klan offshoot group, were known to distribute the pamphlets on occasion as a recruiting tool, Link NKY reported in September. Neighborhoods in Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Indiana have also reported receiving Klan flyers in recent years.
Anti-immigrant Klan pamphlets similar to those seen in Kentucky were discovered in northern Indiana in November, according to South Bend, Indiana-based television station WSBT-TV.
The most current ads invite readers to join the Klan and promise to mail them information packets and applications for a $1 fee. Another flier discovered in Bellevue dubbed Martin Luther King Jr. a “fraud” and a “traitor to our country,” according to an image supplied by McClain.
Nobody called the numbers listed on the leaflets Tuesday evening. A recorded welcome for the Ohio Klan chapter stated, “In January, the world’s going to change for a lot of people, especially the immigrants in Springfield, Ohio,” implying a reference to the Haitian community, which has become the subject of right-wing attacks ahead of the presidential election.
A Bellevue resident saw a Klan flier in the snow on Monday morning and reported it to police, McClain said.
“He was distressed and concerned,” McClain stated. “He said he had some friends who just got their citizenship.”
The Klan fliers discovered on Inauguration Day appeared to refer to Trump’s campaign promises to crack down on immigration upon entering the White House. On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order to terminate birthright citizenship. On the campaign trail, he frequently lambasted the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border and pledged the greatest deportation campaign in US history during his second term. Officials have been considering immigration raids in the days following Trump’s inauguration, with the goal of encouraging undocumented immigrants to “self-deport,” according to the Post.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” McClain said of the Klan fliers handed out on Inauguration Day.
In 2017, Trump branded the Ku Klux Klan as “repugnant” after receiving criticism for first neglecting to speak out and condemn white supremacists after an avowed neo-Nazi killed a counterprotester at a white-supremacist event in Charlottesville. At the time, Trump sought to downplay the event.
The Ludlow Police Department said in a statement that the “disgusting” Klan fliers were protected by the First Amendment, but that if the distributors were identified, the agency would seek criminal charges. The agency indicated that it had received a harassment complaint over the fliers. McClain of the Bellevue police said he would consider arresting anyone who distributed the fliers with trash.
